YOUrban

by jtwhite14

So how did a London visit accompanied by a needy piece of consumer electronics shape how I experienced the city? First, in a very small way it changed the way I moved about. Most notably through repeatedly choosing to walk down Great Eastern Street instead of Curtain Road to get within reach of my hotel’s WiFi. And then pausing for a few minutes on the pavement to download mails and tweets and adjusting the day’s plans according to these.

Importantly then, the mix is always different. The way GPS signals bounce of the architecture or get obstructed by railway-archers. Naming-tropes of domestic WiFi networks and the password-policies and condiments of cafes. Street-culture, pick-pockets, public transport, weather, subscription-models and data-plans are just as crucial for how a networked city is experienced and understood as the overarching infrastructures of the ‘smart city’.